Successes of Slovenian startups

Slovenian startup companies have been experiencing tremendous success among countries of South-eastern Europe and they are now also assuming the leading position in crypto financing or so-called ICO (Initial Coin Offering) as well. From the first platforms for crowdfunding to starting crypto coin trading, Slovenia is co-creating some of the most developed startup companies.

It has been over eight years since the launch of Kickstarter, which enables users to gain support for the developing and realizing their business ideas. During this time, Slovenians have successfully launched over 100 thousand projects and raised billions of euros. Every year, Slovenian startups raise around 100 million euro of startup capital, which places them in the top spot in South-eastern Europe. This is further supported by the fact that more and more of these kinds of companies can then finance themselves with their own revenue. The newly created blockchain technology has developed yet another way for raising funds known as crypto financing. ICO enables fundraising based on an initial offer of cryptocoins, which have been pledged by supporters of the start-up company’s idea.

ICO works on a limited time scale with a predetermined amount of coins and a set price for them. The ICO’s main principle is therefore an initial coin offering that defines the startup capital gained by the supporters of the startup’s business idea. They must convince the users with their vision and idea, while also presenting them with their own cryptocoin. This is projected to dramatically increase in value due to the potential and future success of the company, thus bringing profits to its initial investors. The initial cryptocoin offering is performed on a reliable public blockchain (e.g. Ethereum or NEO) in order to create more trust in the ownership and transfer or the coins. The startups can therefore introduce their own coins for their business solutions in the existing environment. They can request their subcontractors, partners or other participating members to pay for the service using their own cryptocoins instead of traditional currencies (euro, dollar etc.). They ensure further mutual financial flows by paying their own developers in their own cryptocurrencies. This way, they empower themselves and their supporters.

Quite a few successful Slovenian startups have managed to gain many supporters through ICOs as well as the necessary funds. Among them are Hive Project, which received an award at the 2017 CoinAgenda world conference, and OriginTrail, which managed to raise as much as 55.5 million euro by selling cryptocoins. The most recent attention-grabbing startup project was presented by the Vibrerate team, which managed to raise over ten million dollars in less than five seconds with its first cryptocoin offering. This is the route that the managers of one of the most promising projects, Eligma, founded by entrepreneur Dejan Roljić (ABC-accelerator), have chosen to take.